Self-Criticism: Unprincipled Struggle and 'The Externalization' Piece

In April, following the dissolution of the New Communist Party - Liason
Committee (NCP-LC), the Boston and Richmond branches of the Maoist
Communist Group (MCG) published a document titled “The Externalization of
the Anti-Revisionist Struggle is the Negation of Proletarian Politics”.
This document was an attempt to sum up the disagreements that the Boston
and Richmond branches had developed with the New York branch. Since the
document’s publication, the Boston branch has become increasingly
concerned with the politics being put forth by the VA branch, and in
recently reviewing the document, we noted many articulations with which we
do not agree. We’ve come to the determination that we need to publish
a self-criticism of our endorsement of some of the positions put forth in
the document. To be clear, we still uphold the criticisms of the NY branch
with whom we have since split. What is at stake in this self-criticism is
not reneging on the critiques of NY and their small-clique politics of
supposed purity, but rather clarifying our opposition to left-adventurism.
For a succinct definition of left-adventurism we turn to Mao:

“We are also opposed to “Left” phrase-mongering. The thinking of
‘Leftists’ outstrips a given stage of development of the objective
process; some regard their fantasies as truth, while others strain to
realize in the present an ideal which can only be realized in the future.
They alienate themselves from the current practice of the majority of the
people and from the realities of the day, and show themselves adventurist
in their actions.”

A point of clarification: an opposition to left-adventurism is not an
opposition to militant politics or to the use of violence in revolutionary
sequences. It is instead an opposition to actions which are out of step
with the development of the objective situation and do not serve to
advance the cause of proletarian revolution.

In our self-criticism we attempt to explain how and why we made these
errors, so that we (and others) do not repeat these mistakes.

On the Two-Line Struggle

In our determination, the primary error we made in the process of drafting
the “Externalization” piece was failing to pursue the two-line struggle.
That is, the necessity of struggling for proletarian advances against the
capitalist mode of production and the various external class enemies who
work to reproduce it, while simultaneously struggling against deviations
internal to our political organizations so that we continue to advance the
cause of proletarian revolution and the elimination of the basis for
inequality. Without the pursuit of the two-line struggle, we will
inevitably end up practicing a bourgeois line within our organization even
as we combat various external enemies. When our disagreement with a VA
comrade’s proposal to include quotes from the writings of the Brigate
Rosse (BR) was met with a complete lack of engagement, we failed to insist
on struggle over this point. Thus, we allowed quotes from
a left-adventurist group, whose politics we repudiate, to be included in
the document we were drafting collectively. Internally, this was justified
on the grounds that these particular quotes did not have any negative
political content. In our recent re-reading of the document, we have come
to realize that this is not that case, and that the BR quotes put forth
a distinctly anti-Maoist politics.

Our bland liberal acceptance of these articulations–the significance of
which we did not fully understand at the time–was unprincipled. By
liberal acceptance we mean that we neglected ideological struggle in favor
of unprincipled peace between ourselves and VA. The correct and principled
action would have been to insist on struggle over these points and oppose
the pushing through of edits and quotes because of a time constraint. It
must be admitted that this lack of two-line struggle led us to form an
unprincipled unity with VA, predicated on the need to struggle against the
bureaucratic deviations of the NY Branch. But as struggle is the life of
an organization, avoiding principled struggle only covers over
contradictions. Since the publication of the “Externalization” piece, it
has become clear that many serious contradictions were present in our
relations with VA which have since led to the cessation of communication
between our branches. If we had engaged in principled struggle when
drafting the “Externalization” piece, these contradictions would have been
easier to identify and we would have been better equipped to correctly
handle them.

To be clear, there are articulations in the “Externalization” piece that
were not forced through un-democratically which must also be criticized.
However, these errors are not as serious as the error of allowing the
inclusion of quotes that convey such a left-adventurist tendency.

Externalization and Disdain for the Masses

The “Externalization” piece includes two quotes from the BR. This is the
first:

“That is why today it is of fundamental importance for the leap to the
Party to recognize that there is no separation between cultural revolution
in the metropoles and civil war, neither temporally (that is to say as two
separate phases), or spatially. Civil war and cultural revolution are two
aspects of the same process: the total social war. It is by placing that
consideration at the center of the activity of the Party that the correct
basis is established for the construction of the system of red power and
at the same time the war for transition to communism is placed on the
agenda.”

Here the unity between “civil war” and “cultural revolution” is described
as “total social war”. In this articulation, there is no distinction
between these processes (between the seizing of state power and rebellion
against revisionist trends internal to a socialist state or proletarian
organization), and the correct path of the party is described as placing
the necessity of a total social war at the center of its activity. This
opens the door for an adventurist understanding of any armed action, like
those of the BR, as being in the service of the revolution (it’s all
“total social war”, after all) and as being a step along the road to
establishing communist relations of production.

Against this we must assert that the transition to communism is not
something that can be guaranteed by an outburst of violence or the
destruction of a solitary existing organ of state power. Instead,
to trod the path to communism we must employ the mass-line to defeat state
power, engage in two line struggle at all times, and establish the
dictatorship of the proletariat. We must continue the process of the
working-through of contradictions in order to advance towards communism.

This is the second quote from the BR included in the document:

“Internal to the capitalist mode of production, the technical division
of labor appears within the relations of production as a political
separation between manual and mental labor, which is identified with and
polarized between different social figures who contend with one another
for power. We must conduct an incessant battle against this separation,
against its residue in every militant, in every site of politics, every
variable of the proletarian system of power, until the appropriation of
consciousness, mediation and mental processing, can be produced as
necessary and recomposed steps of the daily practice of revolutionary
transformation of the present state of things.

Our criticism towards militarism, that it surreptitiously reintroduces
the separate forms, on one side of knowledge-power (politicians,
theoreticians, spiritual fathers..) and on the other side the combatant
executants (the fighters) is not tactical but involves the foundations of
the metropolitan revolutionary process.

The expropriation of knowledge from the proletarians of the metropole is
much deeper then a limited education, because it [knowledge] states
a decisive condition of their subordination. Knowledge is opposed against
them as power, command embodied in machines, command hierarchy, the rule
of the intellectuals and technicians and moreover the most perfidious form
of the leadership of the ‘organic intellectuals’ and the ‘new political
class.’

The reappropriation of knowledge is the result of revolutionary practice
and no organization calling itself communist can underestimate it. The
reconstruction of social individuals through the recomposition of their
practice is not a problem to be solved in the future. It concerns us today
and develops along with the process of revolutionary struggle, which
transforms the objective world at the same time as it transforms those who
carry out this transformation.

Communists and the development of communism are not two separate
processes.”

Here we have first the equation that “division of labor” = “different
social figures contending for power”. This articulation, steeped in the
ideology of bourgeois individualism, is opposed to the two-line struggle.
The BR posits that, instead of division and contradiction internal
to every grouping and every militant, there is a metaphysical opposition
between those who uphold the division of labor (a supposed undivided group of
politicians, revolutionary theorists, and spiritual fathers) and those who
carry out, unthinkingly, the orders of this technocratic elite.

What the BR is saying here is that all those who do not agree with them
are their enemies and therefore uphold the division of labor. Such
a conception of political disagreements as necessarily co-incident with
upholding the division of labor establishes a politics of purity
supposedly beyond reproach. This left-adventurist politics is defined by
its supposed opposition to the counter-revolutionary figure of the
technocrat, who manages the proletariat by taking away its ability to
think or act, depriving it of access to knowledge-power. This formula is
anti-dialectical: it posits an abstract equivalence between knowledge and
power. Further, since this idea puts forth that the masses do not think
and do not have ideas the quote is clearly anti-Maoist. Instead of
positing the need for two-line struggle at all times, the BR posits
a subjective and arbitrary determination of friends and enemies, where any
disagreement with their politics aligns one with the figure of the
technocratic elite.

In the place of a metaphysically pure class line residing in an
organization operating at a distance from the masses (an idea we have
critiqued the NY branch of the MCG for holding) this quote puts forward
a metaphysically pure political line that resides in a single militant, in
a single-minded opposition to the division of labor. It’s clear again that
these ideas put forward an adventurist understanding, where a single
militant or a small group of militants are understood as advancing the
cause of proletarian revolution by simply striking at the figure of these
“leaders” or anyone who opposes the line of “purity”. The only means to
handle contradictions for these militants is violence, since every
disagreement with the purity of the figure of the militant is a contest
for power and an effort to uphold the division of labor. There is no room
in such a politics for the correct handling of contradictions among the
people, for the preservation of minority opinions within a political
organization, or for principled disagreement between comrades.

We must oppose these left-adventurist conceptions with the Maoist
principles of the mass-line, that the “one divides into two”, and the
two-line struggle. The masses do think, and our work as revolutionaries is
to concentrate the correct ideas of the masses. Positing the existence of
an undivided enemy upholding the division of labor violates the principle
that “the one divides into two” and that all militants and all political
lines divide. Instead of drawing abstract and arbitrary categories and
formulating supposedly pure political lines based on those determinations,
it is necessary to pursue the two-line struggle at all times. Without
doing so, communists will only reproduce inequality and oppression
(internal to their organizations) in the struggle against external
enemies. Without the two-line struggle, communists externalize the
anti-revisionist struggle, and therefore negate proletarian politics.

To once again reiterate our self-criticism, it was primarily our hasty
reading and our stale liberalism that led us to accept the addition of
these quotes. In order to avoid these deviations, we should have pursued
the two-line struggle and refused to accept an unprincipled agreement on
the addition of these quotes.

Clarity, Unity, and Democratic Centralism

The same form of liberalism led us to accept the addition of a number of
confusing and overly academic articulations in the “Externalization”
piece. The comrade who put forward the quotes from the BR also wrote
a number of statements which were indicative of petite-bourgeois
intellectualism. We in Boston challenged these confused articulations and
pushed this comrade to be more clear. In this instance he responded to our
criticism, but only to state that his original articulation was clear
enough and that he opposed any changes to his wording.

At the time, we in Boston were focused on our opposition of the
revisionist politics being forward by the NY branch and consequently paid
too little attention to the concerning developments in VA. We sought to
forge a unity with comrades in VA, but failed to realize that struggle is
the life of a political organization, and that without real ideological
struggle there can be no principled unity and therefore no political
organization! We saw clearly how NY’s bureaucratic foreclosure of struggle
prohibited the development of principled politics within the MCG, but we
remained blind to how our own failure to pursue the two-line struggle was
also a deviation from principled politics. Because of this, we accepted
the confused and convoluted articulations of one comrade from VA despite
the fact that he was the only one that supported the inclusion of his
unedited writing. An adherence to the principle of democratic centralism
would have avoided this deviation towards a subjective and arbitrary
articulation.

In order to clarify some crucial contradictions internal to the
“Externalization” piece itself, we must criticize the closing lines in
particular. The final paragraph, authored by this one comrade, remains
dangerously close to the writings of the BR and contains certain
fundamental ambiguities which must be clarified and criticized:

“We end with a final provisional thesis on the universal political
importance of the Cultural Revolution:

The basic political question is how such a trajectory can advance
towards communism with a protracted continuity. The question of state
power when it is posited in relation to the realization of the communist
objective at every moment and not autonomized by a instrumental stage
theory is a dependent variable in relation to this question of how to
launch and develop this living identity of cultural revolution and civil
war.”

This final section is concerned with the question of the difference
between “an instrumental stage theory” and “the realization of the
communist objective at every moment.” Through further communication it has
become clear that what is being put forward here is the idea of the
“immediate realization of communism”, said to be possible through the
mass-suicide of the party in the wake of a successful national revolution
that arms the masses. This articulation clearly negates the need for, or
possibility of, the dictatorship of the proletariat in favor of an
ultra-left fantasy of resolving each and every contradiction of capitalist
social relations through the self-destruction of the party. In
self-criticism, it must be said that we did not engage critically with
this passage. If we had done so, we would have come to understand the
anti-Maoist politics that are put forward in it.

The ultra-left position put forward in this final passage is consistent
with the BR quotes that were critiqued earlier in this document. This
position substitutes a metaphysical dualism of the opposition between
bourgeoisie and proletariat for a detailed analysis of the contradictions
at play in a situation. This overly simplistic metaphysical position is
best labeled as “Two times One” in its world outlook because it simplifies
the complexity of concrete situations into static dualisms.

Two errors prevail here in the understanding of contradictions. The first
error is based on positing an abstract equivalence between contradictions.
From this position, it follows that in the wake of a successful
revolution, the dualist opposition between the bourgeoisie and the
proletariat is replaced by that of the party and the masses. Thus, just
as it is necessary to destroy the bourgeoisie to achieve revolution, it is
posited that the destruction of the party is the only possible means of
preventing their ossification into a new bureaucratic bourgeoisie. This is
the “living identity of cultural revolution and civil war” where there is
no two-line struggle, only struggle against the enemy.

The second error is based on positing an abstract equivalence between the
two sides of a contradiction. The bourgeoisie and the proletariat are not
two equal and opposite forces contending for power; if this were the case,
it would mean that victory of the proletariat would entail replacing the
bourgeoisie as the oppressive and exploitative class. But instead, the
victory of the proletariat entails the destruction of the contradiction
between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat via the realization of
communism. That is to say, the elimination of the possibility of
inequality which means the elimination of the possibility of the existence
of the proletariat itself.

What’s more, the ultra-left articulation put forward by this comrade in VA
forecloses on the necessity of a prolonged working-through of
contradictions in the wake of a successful revolution. Without a concrete
understanding of the need for and purpose of two-line struggle against
revisionism, promoted by the dictatorship of the proletariat, one is led
to posit that the dictatorship of the proletariat is equivalent to
a bureaucratic bourgeoisie that upholds revisionism. It must be noted that
this position is in line with what the NY MCG puts forward in their
document “On Maoist Practice” namely, that:

“Mass initiative is effectively exhausted in
the relation of leadership that organizes it—which is to say: it is drained
in the tactics of seizing state power from the bourgeoisie with the aim of
smashing the bourgeois state and building a proletarian state of a new type.”

Through our failure to pursue the two-line struggle in drafting this document
with VA, we failed to realize the similarity of the politics of the NY branch
and the politics being put forward by this comrade in VA. It is now clear to us
that positions of this comrade from VA and the NY branch are very similar in
both their ultra-leftist rejection of the need for the two-line struggle and
their rejection of the dictatorship of the proletariat in favor of positing
a metaphysically correct political line.

Mass Democracy and the Mass Line

Throughout the “Externalization” piece, there are a number of references
to the need to “further the democracy of the masses.” However, the
articulation of exactly what such a task entails remains vague and
unclear. A reader could be forgiven for believing that we are simply
advocating for bourgeois democracy, for the free circulation of diverse
opinions. The ambiguity of our articulation also left room for
a left-adventurist interpretation that understands the democracy of the
masses as achievable solely by arming the masses and attacking various
organs of the bourgeois state. We should have been clearer in our
articulation so as to avoid these potential confusions.

In our view, it is key to understand that the democracy of the masses
cannot be furthered without the mass-line. Furthering the democracy of the
masses is the process of working towards the realization of communism
through the use of the mass-line to concentrate the correct ideas of the
masses, which are then deployed in concrete struggles. The concentration of
the correct ideas of the masses also
necessarily entails promoting those of the advanced while isolating the
backwards ideas which are reflective of bourgeois ideology;
without doing so, concentrating the correct ideas
of the masses is not possible.

Understood in this sense, the furthering of
the democracy of the masses through the mass line is directly related to
the ability of the masses to realize their power and win in the struggle against the
bourgeoisie. Insofar as ‘the correct ideas come from the masses’ a revolutionary
organization without broad and deep ties within the masses will never succeed in making
revolution. It is only through concentrating the correct ideas of the
masses that we can advance our revolutionary practice and MLM itself.